Find us on Facebook

Strawberry Fields is one of the most visited spots in Central Park and one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City. This keepsake volume (available from Amazon.com here) is a celebration of the 2.5-acre teardrop-shaped living memorial to John Lennon’s life and work. The year 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of its dedication, as well as what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday. Located in the park directly across the street from the Dakota, the building where John and Yoko lived for several years before his untimely death, Strawberry Fields was originally conceived as a “peace garden.” Yoko invited the entire world to donate trees, shrubs, and stones to fill this parcel of land, and today, the garden flourishes with contributions from 121 countries.

A rich and lively patchwork of text and imagery will tell the story of John and Yoko’s love affair with the park and of the creation of this unique corner of the park through an unprecedented collaborative effort between Yoko Ono, the Central Park Conservancy, and city officials.

Author, Sara Cedar Miller has been the official historian and photographer of the Central Park Conservancy since the 1980s. She is the author of Abrams’ Central Park, An American Masterpiece and Seeing Central Park.

Yoko Ono’s beautiful/sad gift to New York City

by Joe Meyers, Connecticut Post
Abrams has just published a gorgeous little photo book, “Strawberry Fields,” devoted to one of the most moving and useful memorials that I know of — the 5.3 acres of Central Park that was restored and landscaped in memory of John Lennon.

The musician loved New York City intensely and made his home in one of the city’s most historic apartment buildings — the Dakota on Central Park West.

Like most other Manhattanites, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono made good use of Central Park for strolling, people watching and as a way of escaping the high energy streets surrounding the urban oasis.

Lennon’s death outside the Dakota might have led some widows to turn their back on such a tragic scene, but Ono remained in the building and starting in 1981 she dedicated herself to spearheading the creation of Strawberry Fields in his honor.

As Sara Cedar Miller points out in the book, Ono managed to invite contributions in her husband’s name from 50 different countries, all of which are now symbolically represented at the site.

I have visited Strawberry Fields many times and while there is always a melancholy undertone to being there — how I wish Lennon had lived to celebrate his 70th birthday this year, all the while creating more of the music I’ve loved most of my life — it is the most vibrant memorial I’ve ever seen. Full of life, busy with visitors from all over the world, and an important part of a great park.

Ono has played a crucial role in the history of Central Park since Strawberry Fields was dedicated on Oct. 9, 1985. The project gave a huge boost to the recently formed Central Park Conservancy, dedicated to maintaining Frederick Law Olmsted’s magnificent creation.

The president of the Conservancy, Douglas Blonsky, writes in the foreword, “When (Strawberry Fields) opened to the public that day, the Conservancy was still a fledgling organization, having been established only five years earlier as a new kind of partnership whose goal was to assist the City of New York with private funding and professional management toward the restoration and maintenance of the Park’s severely deteriorated landscapes and structures.”

The early 1980s were a carryover from the bad old bankrupt days of the 1970s, a time when the rundown condition of the park and the rampant nighttime crime there became story points in countless movies, ranging from the vigilante thriller “Death Wish” (1974) to the acerbic Neil Simon comedy “The Out of Towners” (1970).

Strawberry Fields was “the Park’s first major landscape to be planned, designed, and constructed with Conservancy funding, and it was sponsored by the Conservancy’s first million dollar donor, Yoko Ono,” Blonsky writes.

The Abrams book contains a history of the park and the Conservancy — and the rise of the apartment houses that now surround Central Park — but most of the book is dedicated to the wonderful pictures of Sara Cedar Miller who has been the official Conservancy photographer since the 1980s.

How Will We Remember Ground Zero?

Strawberry Fields Shows the Vital Importance of Good Design

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, joined with Mayor Ed Koch, Parks Commissioner Stern, and an array of musicians to inaugurate Strawberry Fields as a permanent public memorial. The date marked what would have been Lennon’s 45th birthday and fell nearly five years after his murder on December 22, 1980. The selected site was a 2.5 acre parcel at 72nd Street and Central Park West, across from Lennon and Ono’s home in the Dakota, the apartment building where his murder occurred following a night out in the city they had come to love and exuberantly enliven during one of the darkest stretches in its history.

The proposal for Strawberry Fields coincided auspiciously with the efforts of the still nascent Central Park Conservancy to restore and manage all of its 843 acres. The landscape architect Bruce Kelly won the commission (he died of AIDS just eight years later in 1993) and began working with Ms. Ono as the various bureaucratic approvals fell into place.

The memorial thus took shape from the outset as part of an overall civic enterprise characterized by hopeful rebirth, access, and harmony with the environment. It was an example of green design decades before the term came into use.

As a designated “quiet zone” within the Park’s new restorative master plan, Kelly’s design incorporated plants from 161 contributing countries in a landscape of glacial schist with contextual deference to Olmsted and Vaux’s original design, which had long been eviscerated by muddy neglect. It was conceived for enjoyment of nature with the exception of a small classical mosaic donated by the City of Naples inscribed only with the lyric: Imagine. The forum defined by this mosaic with its circumference of benches and an ever-shifting garden is all that specifically recalls its beloved honoree. As a result, there was never a fixed narrative.

The ultimate success of such public place-making is the fact that its form and function have taken precedence over its precise memorialized subject. As a paradoxical result, Lennon’s memory survives and thrives, including evermore in the hearts and imaginations of those born long after his death. Strawberry Fields was a new kind of memorial, one that changes and evolves over time without ever forfeiting its focus on the man himself.

Of course Lennon’s music is the greatest memorial of all, but Strawberry Fields plays an important part in his legacy as a place for recollection as well as historic discovery. Its success is demonstrated by its diverse daily use and its reliable popularity as a locus for all manner of celebration and tribute. Lennon’s legacy is not constrained by his personal circumstances in either life or death. Instead, he reaps the organic embrace sowed by his example and his survivors’ broad good will. A case is point were the candlelit vigils and spontaneous tributes that appeared there in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and which have recurred every anniversary since. The forum works: Imagine a world free of terror; you are not the only one.

It is worth bearing in mind the Strawberry Fields example as New York and the world count down a year from now to the inauguration of the long-awaited World Trade Center Memorial by architect Michael Arad and its formal surrounding Memorial Plaza, defining together a large swath of the benighted Ground Zero (actually within the footprint of the attack) for as far into the future as anyone can foresee. As our memory of 9/11 fades, will its static, event-specific narrative attract and inform future generations? Will it become like America’s ubiquitous Civil War monuments, mute landmarks hidden in plain sight and ignored except by a few voluntary stewards? The risk is that the memory of those who perished will not outlast the lives of those who knew them or those who lived through that infamous day and felt its shattering impact face on–that the Memorial’s large scale and fixed formality of insistent, mournful specificity might inadvertently arrest future reflection sooner than is required or until some other global tragedy displaces it. At its quarter century mark in 2036, will it still have an audience beyond descendant survivors and first-time tourists? The heated debate regarding the meaning and scope of “Ground Zero,” spawned as it has been by the proposed Cordoba House, raises the stakes of enduring impact further still.

We should all hope in any case that future audiences are engaged as a seminal history lesson and the restoration of civic order both call for it.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, each year in Strawberry Fields, well over one million New Yorkers and their worldwide visitors continue revealing how successful memorial design can transcend the precise formulative subject with a destination of mutable meaning that in turn sustains the founding impulse. Its existence is one reason why we will celebrate Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 9, as the first traces of autumn will show their colors.

Strawberry Fields

Strawberry Fields is a living memorial to the world-famous singer, songwriter and peace activist – John Lennon. During his career with the Beatles and in his solo work, John’s music gave hope and inspiration to people around the world. His campaign for peace lives on, symbolized here at Strawberry Fields.

This tranquil section of Central Park was named after one of the Beatles’ best-known songs, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Recorded in 1966, the song’s title comes from an orphanage in Liverpool, England where John used to go to play with the children. His aunt, who raised him, disapproved but he insisted it was, “nothing to get hung about.” Hence, the song’s famous lyric.

Strawberry Fields was officially dedicated on October 9, 1985 – the 45th anniversary of John’s birth. Yoko Ono worked with landscape architect Bruce Kelly and the Central Park Conservancy to create a 2.5-acre meditative spot. The iconic black-and-white mosaic was created by Italian craftsmen and given as a gift by the city of Naples. Based on a Greco-Roman design, it bears the word: Imagine.

That song was John’s plea for us all to envision a world without conflict or division, and imagine instead a world of peace. He wrote those lyrics from a place of incredibly deep love and immense hope for the future.

A designated “quiet zone” in the Park, the memorial is shaded by stately American elms and lined with benches. In the warmer months, flowers bloom all around the area. Along the path near the mosaic, you’ll find a bronze plaque that lists the 121 countries that endorse Strawberry Fields as a Garden of Peace. Today you’ll find visitors from around the world flocking to Strawberry Fields.

On December 18, 1980, a resolution to honor Lennon was introduced in New York’s City Council by the Councilmember-at-Large from Manhattan. It was co-sponsored by 30 members from all five boroughs, a majority of the Council. Here is the text of the resolution:

Whereas, The Council has learned with deep sorrow of the death on December 8, of John Lennon, musician and lyricist, and

Whereas, Born to a working-class family in Liverpool, England, on October 9, 1940, he grew up in modest circumstances and without formal musical training, and

Whereas, in co-operation with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, he founded the Beatles, a group that earned a world-wide reputation through the strength of its compositions, the significance of its lyrics, the style and force of its performance, and

Whereas, Since 1969, he has lived in the city of New York, waging an important struggle with the aid of Congressman Edward I. Koch and others to be admitted to the United States as a permanent resident, and

Whereas, He and the Beatles, through such songs as “Give Peace a Chance” lent strength to the international effort to bring an end to the war in Vietnam, and

Whereas, The music of the Beatles has provided enjoyment to a generation of people around the world, combining high art with popular culture, and

Whereas, Last Monday, he was tragically murdered as he entered his home at One West 72nd Street in the Borough of Manhattan in the City of New York, and

Whereas, Millions of people, of all nations, of all walks of life, have joined in respect for his memory and in protest at his senseless death, now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Council of the City of New York does hereby tender this expression of its sorrow and joins with all others in mourning his passing, and be it further

Resolved, that copies of this resolution be sent to his widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, and his sons, Julian and Sean.

—

Under the rules of the Council, in order to be adopted on first reading, a resolution required unanimous consent. This resolution was objected to by Councilman Angelo Arculeo of Brooklyn, a Republican who was minority leader of the Council. In his remarks, he said that Lennon was a drug user, that his example had led other people to use drugs, and that he was not an appropriate person for the City Council to honor. Arculeo added that he didn’t “recall these kinds of tributes being extended to Bing Crosby, who really was an American legend.” Consequently, the resolution was tabled.

If the Council wishes to do so, it can correct this thirty-year-old injustice by adopting the resolution now.

The municipal legislature did, however, honor John Lennon in a more important way. On March 26, 1981, it adopted a bill which named an area in Central Park as Strawberry Fields, a reference to the Beatles’ 1967 song, “Strawberry Fields Forever”. The bill was signed into law by Mayor Edward I. Koch on April 16, becoming Local Law No. 34 of 1981. Here it is:

LOCAL LAWS
OF
THE CITY OF NEW YORK
FOR THE YEAR 1981
_______

No. 34
________

Introduced by Council Members Stern, Messinger and Wallace; also Council Members Greitzer, Alter, Dryfoos, Foster, Friedlander, Gerges, Katzman, Michels, Povman, Ryan, Silverman, Steingut, Horwitz and Eisland–

A LOCAL LAW

To amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to a park name, Strawberry Fields, Central Park, Borough of Manhattan.

Be it enacted by the Council as follows:

Section 1. Section B4-50.0 of title B of chapter four of the administrative code of the city of New York is hereby amended by adding thereto a new designation to read as follows:

The tear-shaped area, bounded on the south by Olmsted-Vaux Way, on the east by West (Winter) Drive, and on the west by the exit road from West (Winter) Drive to 72nd Street and Central Park West.

§2. This local law shall take effect immediately.

THE CITY OF NEW YORK, OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK, S.S.:

I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of a local law of The City of New York, passed by the Council on March 26, 1981, and approved by the Mayor on April 16, 1981.

DAVID N. DINKINS, City Clerk, Clerk of the Council.

—

After the passage of the bill, Yoko Ono Lennon wrote to the Parks Department, proposing that the area known as Strawberry Fields, which is about 5.3 acres in size, be freshly landscaped, with plantings from all over the world and works of art. She offered to pay for all the work done, and contribute to a fund whose interest would help pay the salary of a gardener to maintain the area.

It took four years to secure the necessary approvals, design and build Strawberry Fields. The story will be told by Sara Cedar Miller, historian and photographer for the Central Park Conservancy, in a book: “Strawberry Fields: Central Park’s Memorial to John Lennon”, to be published by Abrams in June 2011.

One point, however, should be made here. Yoko Ono did NOT contribute money to Central Park on condition that the area now called Strawberry Fields be so named in honor of her husband. We proposed the resolution and the name change without any contact with her, and without any plan for the improvement of the area. She called Mayor Koch on her own to make the offer, and the mayor referred her call to then-Commissioner Gordon Davis and Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, co-founder of the Central Park Conservancy in 1980 and the dues ex machina of the restoration of Central Park.

The name change was the city’s spontaneous honor to a worldwide figure who chose to make his home here. The beautification and redevelopment of the area came subsequently, as Yoko Ono’s generous gift to the people of the City of New York, who will enjoy Strawberry Fields for generations to come.

Strawberry Fields Forever

In memory of John Lennon, New York City has designated a beautiful
triangular island in Central Park to be known as Strawberry Fields. It happens
to be where John and I took our last walk together. John would have been very
proud that this was given to him, and island named after his song, rather than a
statue or monument.

My initial thought was to acquire some English and Japanese plants and
give them to the park commission to to be planted in Strawberry Fields. But
somehow that idea was not quite in the spirit of things. Then I remembered
what John and I did when we first met over ten years ago. We planted and acorn
in England as a symbol of our love. We then sent acorns to all the heads of state
around the world, inviting them to do the same. Many responded saying that
they enjoyed the experience.

So in the name of John and Yoko, and spirit of love and sharing, I would
like to once again invite all countries of the world, this time to offer plants,
rocks and/or stones of their nations for Strawberry Fields. The plants will
eventually be forests, the rocks will be a resting place for traveling souls, the
bricks will pave the lane John and I used to walk on and the circle where we
used to sit and talk for hours. It will be nice to have the whole world in one
place, one field, living and growing together in harmony. This will be the nicest
tribute we could ever give to John. The acorn we planted a decade ago is now a tree.
I would like to obtain a twig from it to be transplanted on the island. Maybe we
could add a moonstone or a pebble from Mars, so as not to shut out the
universe. The invitation is open! Let me take you to Strawberry Fields.

Love,

Yoko Ono
New York City
19 August 1981

Strawberry Fields is in for a restoration

Mayor Koch and Gordon J. Davis, the Parks Commissioner, said yesterday that Strawberry Fields, a triangular area of Central Park named in honor of the late John Lennon, would undergo landscape restoration.

The plan was developed in response to a letter from Mr. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, who said she would pay for whatever plants were needed for the area that were not donated from Lennon fans around the world.

The naming of Strawberry Fields in honor of Mr. Lennon was authorized by the City Council shortly after the former Beatle’s murder last December. The area is often called an “island” because it is located on Central Park West at the West 72nd Street entrance to the park, where the road branches in two directions to form a triangle-shaped patch of park.

“It happens to be where John and I took our last walk together,” Miss Ono said. “John would be glad that this was given to him, an island named after his song, rather than a statue or a monument.”

She said she was writing “the heads of state throughout the world” to ask for offers of “plants, rocks and/or stones of their nations for Strawberry Fields.”

Mr. Koch said that “the design plan that Yoko Ono and the Parks Department’s expert staff have proposed is in keeping with the Olmsted tradition and with the Central Park Conservancy’s overall restoration plan.” Frederick Law Olmsted was one of the park’s designers.

John Lennon area in Park approved

By The Associated Press
Published: April 7, 1983

The City Landmarks Preservation Commission yesterday approved plans for landscaping a section of Central Park in memory of John Lennon.

The site, near 72d Street and Central Park West, will have sunken paths, new shrubbery and a mosaic with the word “Imagine” spelled out in tiles to commemorate the Lennon song. The landscaping will be paid for with a $500,000 gift from Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, according to Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern.

The area is called Strawberry Fields, after another Lennon song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” In 1981, Mr. Stern, as a City Councilman at Large from Manhattan, sponsored a bill naming the three-acre site.

Ground is broken for Strawberry Fields

Yoko Ono looked up at the cold, rainy sky over Central Park yesterday. “Thank you, John,” she said, her voice choking through a smile. “We made it happen again.”

Using golden shovels, the musician’s widow and Mayor Koch helped break ground on the two-and-a-half- acre section of the park called Strawberry Fields, dedicated to John Lennon. The Mayor said Miss Ono had given the city $1 million to restore and maintain the area.

The plot, just east of 72d Street and Central Park West, is a few hundred yards from the spot where the former Beatle was shot dead on Dec. 8, 1980, in front of his home in the Dakota.

Miss Ono said that they had taken their last walk together in the small hilly area and that “John would have been very proud that this was given to him, an island named after his song, rather than a statue or a monument.”

Among the plantings of 126 trees, 1,500 shrubs, 25,000 vines and 18,000 perennials will be 25,000 strawberry plants, said Henry J. Stern, the Parks Commissioner.

“This is not a construction gift for a building,” Mr. Stern said. “It’s a gift to the earth – a gift of life.”

Several foreign officials were present because several consulates plan to contribute to Miss Ono’s bequest.

“Ten years ago, the Lennons planted an acorn in England,” said Michael W. Marshall, the British deputy consul general, “so we’re giving an oak.”

The Italians are giving a mosaic, the French a fountain and the Dutch flower bulbs.

Several hundred young admirers strained behind police barricades. “I came for my own little tribute to John Lennon,” said Trina Mrnak, 19 years old. “I think it’s special for the city to dedicate something to a musician instead of a war hero. But he was more. He was a musical prophet, so honest and true, not violent or pretentious.”

“He stood for freedom and peace,” Mr. Marshall said, “and we’re all still striving for that, in our way.”

Central Park renews its details and vistas in a burst of repairs

The leaves are beginning to turn in Central Park and the first chill forebodings of winter are in the air. But it is the season of rebirth for the 126-year-old park.

From the newly cut bluestone steps at the Girls’ Gate entrance at East 102nd Street to the elegant sandstone birds being replaced on the balustrades of Bethesda Terrace in from 72d Street, renovation is evident everywhere. Lawns are being resodded and reseeded. Arches and playgrounds are being rebuilt. Hundreds of flowering shrubs, trees and bushes are being planted as paths are redirected, underbrush is cleared and the original vistas are restored.

“It is an epoch of rebuilding similar to the original building of the park, which occurred between 1858 and 1873,” said Elizabeth Barlow, the Central Park administrator. “And it will be reconstructed with the same amount of labor and love.”

One of the most extensive landscaping projects is Strawberry Fields, just inside the 72d Street gate on Central Park West. The single largest gift in the park’s history – $1 million in memory of John Lennon from his wife, Yoko Ono – will relandscape three acres in a grove of oak trees that slopes down to the lake. It will be planted with exotic specimen trees and covered with the white flowers and tiny red fruit of wild strawberry plants.

This project is particularly dear to the hearts of parks officials because it includes $350,000 for an endowment fund to insure that the area is properly maintained.

“Yoko Ono’s extraordinary gift has set a standard for vision and generosity,” said Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern.

Strawberry Fields ‘Garden of Peace’ opens today

At times, Bruce Kelly concedes, the construction of Strawberry Fields seemed to be taking forever. And it was hard for Mr. Kelly, the landscape architect in charge of the Central Park project, to imagine clearing all the obstacles involved in creating Yoko Ono’s “International Garden of Peace” honoring her late husband, John Lennon.

“It’s a biggish idea,” said Mr. Kelly, 36 years old, a soft-spoken Southerner. He recalled some of those hurdles as he toured the three and a half acres that have been transformed since 1984 from a scrubby-looking patch with many dying trees to a softly rolling garden full of uncommon greenery.

The opening ceremony, with Mayor Koch and Miss Ono and an array of international diplomats, is to be held today on the birthdays of both Mr. Lennon, who would have been 45, and his son Sean, who turns 10.

The plot, just east of 72d Street and Central Park West, was a favorite walking spot of the Lennons. The Dakota apartment house, where Mr. Lennon lived and, on Dec. 8, 1980, died, is the towering chocolate-colored backdrop for Strawberry Fields.

There are 150 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 20,000 perennials. From the late Princess Grace of Monaco, there are dogwoods; from the Soviet Union, river birches; from the Canadians, maples, and from the Dutch, daffodil bulbs.

F.Y.I.: ‘Imagine’ Under Foot

Q. I’ve spent many summer afternoons staring at the “Imagine” tribute to John Lennon in Central Park as countless tourists have sat on it, posed with it and even lain on top of it. Are people allowed to do this?

A. Yes and no. Referring to the mosaic set in the path with the word “Imagine” in the center, a Parks spokeswoman, Dana Rubinstein, said: “There is no rule forbidding visitors to walk over the memorial.” But, she added, “as always, we do ask park patrons to treat their public spaces with respect.”

The memorial began its life in 1984, when Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, contributed $500,000 to redesign and renovate Strawberry Fields, just off 72nd Street. It had been named in honor of Lennon in 1981. The landscape architect Bruce Kelly designed a meditative Garden of Peace. At the western point of the garden, Neapolitan artisans designed a circular black and white mosaic emblem to be embedded into the pavement. It contained a starburst pattern and the word, “Imagine,” from John Lennon’s 1971 anthem for peace, which was written on the back of a hotel bill on an airplane. Strawberry Fields was dedicated Oct. 9, 1985, the 45th anniversary of Lennon’s birth.